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Comment by vlunkr | Hacker News Reader

Is it weird to anyone else that all this "cyber warfare" is happening over the release of a movie. A comedy movie, not a documentary or propaganda film. I don't know if media has every had such an inadvertent impact on politics before. I would say it's a strange age we live in, but I think this strangeness is all from North Korea.

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Well to be clear to the North Koreans this is 100% a propaganda movie.

There seems that people living under regimes with limited freedom often fail to comprehend that people living in other countries might produce something without the explicit approval of their government.

To the North Koreans, it is beyond comprehension that people living in the US made something, rather than the US government making it. To them, if Americans made it, that means America made it.

This misunderstanding isn't limited to works coming out of the US of course. Another example of this failure to comprehend freedom of expression is the aftermath of the Muhammad cartoons published by some Danish newspapers. Enraged extremists around the world began rioting in front of Danish Embassies, as though the cartoons were drawn, commissioned, or even approved by the Danish government.

See also: The souring of Chinese-Norwegian relations after the Norwegian Nobel Committee (which is a private organization which awards a private prize, despite having some members selected by Norwegian parliament) awarded the 2010 Nobel Peace Prize to Liu Xiaobo.

I have seen this line of thought some times now but I can't help but having a hard time believing it to be true. The notion that in other countries people have the right to express themselves freely is not particularly hard to grasp and pass on, even if told otherwise by state media (which are probably not very well respected under oppressive regimes.)

Think of it as molding and allowing. The nation molds people into producing the same unsurprising results (I mean the frequency of couch-potatoes-who-get-offended-by-the-sight-of-alcohol-but-not-guns is unmatched in the rest of the world, despite the freedom) and lets them to make unrespectful drawings. In which case the nation is as much producing the drawings as the individuals.

> the Norwegian Nobel Committee (which is a private organization which awards a private prize, despite having some members selected by Norwegian parliament)

The Peace Prize is a bit closer to the Norwegian government than that. Alfred Nobel left that part of his will directly to the Norwegian Parliament, not to a private organization, and he tasked the Parliament with using the money to establish a peace prize. The Parliament established a committee, the Nobel Committee, to administer the award, and traditionally its members were a subset of standing members of Parliament, with the partisan makeup of the Nobel Committee reflecting each party's representation in Parliament.

In recent years they have instituted a rule that current parliamentarians can't sit on the committee, and instead retired parliamentarians are chosen, to given it slightly more distance. But they're still 100% selected by Parliament, and allocated to each party in proportion to party representation in the Parliament.

The current reality is that the Norwegian Nobel Committee is a private body, and it is not currently the role of Norwegian Parliament to dictate to it who they may or may not award prizes to.

Nobel may not have set it up that way personally, but that is how it is currently set up.

But the Norwegian government has absolutely nothing to do with who gets the prize, which is the whole point here. The fact that China gets angry at Norway et al because of a committee in Norway gave the peace prize to someone almost nobody in China knows about is a bit petty.

That could be because China looks at politics more like a old boys club than Norway does.

Then again, there have been some eyebrow raising choices over the years.

The cabinet doesn't directly award the prize, no. But Parliament chooses the people who choose the prize. That seems like exercising a pretty strong degree of control over who gets the prize, as with any other committee appointed by Parliament. And worse, they are specifically political appointments, not an attempt at appointing a quasi-independent "body of experts". There was a move some decades ago to change the makeup so the committee would be comprised of independent experts, from e.g. the academic, NGO, or scientific sectors, and maybe even including non-Norwegians. But that was rejected, so the committee continues to be staffed exclusively by important politicians.

For example, the current committee has the following members: Thorbjørn Jagland (Labour Party), Kaci Kullmann Five (Conservatives), Inger-Marie Ytterhorn (Progress Party), Berit Reiss-Andersen (Labour Party), Gunnar Stålsett (Centre Party).

A slightly different way of putting it might be: the Nobel Prize is awarded jointly by the major political parties of Norway, via their chosen representatives.

> There seems that people living under regimes with limited freedom often fail to comprehend that people living in other countries might produce something without the explicit approval of their government.

Ironically though, there are reports that this is exactly what happened: "U.S. government approved 'The Interview's' assassination scene, Sony emails allege" (http://www.dailydot.com/entertainment/sony-hack-emails-the-i...)

Approval may be given in countries which are free, but it is not required. If it is required, then that country is not free. Members of the government may chose to praise or condemn any work they please, but in that capacity they are no different from anyone else. We do not strip our elected officials of the right to comment on art.

That's incredibly naive. The likelihood of a Hollywood corporation releasing a North Korean movie that made any endorsements of the country is virtually nil. It is structurally impossible. That is in part thanks to the extremely blurred distinction between US corporations and the state.

If North Korea suddenly became a US ally, though, it would happen eventually.

Hollywood has often been a front for US policymakers to covertly influence domestic opinion. You may be oblivious to this, but I doubt the North Koreans are.

> "The likelihood of a Hollywood corporation releasing a North Korean movie that made any endorsements of the country is virtually nil. It is structurally impossible."

The likelihood of Hollywood releasing a movie that praises the Nazis is virtually nil, but that has fuck-all to do with "blurred distinctions" between Hollywood and the US Government.

Before the US entered the war it actually wouldn't have been all that unlikely. They had plenty of supporters. Only after did it become an impossibility.

And yes, that was everything to do with the US government.

Anything coming out of Hollywood that involve a nation or its leadership, is a propaganda movie in some way or other.

A comedy movie did not cause this, a comedy movie triggered it. It has been brewing for years.

To North Korean culture, I'm not sure they see the humor in satirizing their leader who may as well fart rainbows for all they know. It's a slap in the face, regardless of who did it or with which intentions.

God knows this isn't the first time North Korea has been the butt of jokes, but it is the first time it was done so publicly, on such a large scale, directly out of hollywood, that the entire world then consumes. To not respond would appear weak, I think.

Viral marketing for "Black Hat"

It is a propaganda film.

edit -

Propaganda [mass noun] Information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote a political cause or point of view.

Lots of films, many I particularly like, are propaganda films.

Pleading comedy or satire doesn't prevent something being propaganda, and featuring the slow-motion fiery death of the leader of a country that you have bombed and not yet made peace with, I think qualifies.

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